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PM under pressure to stop 'rivers of grog' in Alice Springs

PETER CAVE: Poor school attendance rates and alcohol are expected to be high on the agenda when the Prime Minister visits Alice Springs this week.

Ms Gillard will be met by a chorus of campaigners who have long been grappling with the so-called 'rivers of grog' blamed for fuelling violence and child abuse.

Michael Coggan reports from Alice Springs.

(Sound of Chico playing guitar and singing)

MICHAEL COGGAN: Every Sunday a preacher known as Chico sets up an outdoor church by plugging his guitar into loudspeakers on the western bank of the Todd River.

Chico has been playing his music at this spot just below the Todd Tavern pub for almost 20 years.

CHICO: Twenty years ago many people used to live in the river. Very few people live in the river anymore. People are a lot cleaner these days than they were 20-odd years ago. Of course this is not only the Lord but the new laws that have come into the town.

MICHAEL COGGAN: About 25 women, men and children sit on the carpark asphalt to listen to the service.

MICHAEL COGGAN: The Todd Tavern bottle shop opens in the middle of the sermon.

But not until the end of the service and the free sausage sandwiches do the hardened drinkers leave the congregation to walk to the shop to buy the first drink of the day.

Hidden Valley town camp resident Ishmail is waiting with his mother, Sarah, and some of his 11 siblings for a ride in the church minibus back home.

(To Ishmail) What are you doing here today?

ISHMAIL: Eating food and listening to some, what Chico singing.

MICHAEL COGGAN: Do you like doing that?

ISHMAIL: Yeah.

MICHAEL COGGAN: What's good about it?

ISHMAIL: It is nice and good too.

MICHAEL COGGAN: The Federal Government is hoping to help disadvantaged children like Ishmail by spending $150 million on new houses and refurbishments in the town camps.

This week the Prime Minister will take a firsthand look at some of the work completed so far and the terrible conditions in the town camps when she visits Alice Springs.

Town camp resident and former Greens candidate Barbara Shaw is having her house refurbished and would like a chance to talk to Julia Gillard.

BARBARA SHAW: I would tell her that, you know, a lot of people in remote communities are very unhappy with the intervention and I would tell her that she needs to start listening to people and start working and having involvement with Aboriginal people.

MICHAEL COGGAN: Dr John Boffa from the People's Alcohol Action Coalition is urging the Prime Minister to use the visit to announce a minimum price for a standard drink, along with other measures to cut the high level of alcohol consumption in Central Australia.

JOHN BOFFA: The key means to do that is evidence based policies such as an alcohol floor price and one day a week where there is no takeaway alcohol linked to Centrelink payments and there is no excuse for not doing them and these policies cost nothing. They cost taxpayers nothing.

MICHAEL COGGAN: It's not clear whether any of these recommendations will be supported by the Prime Minister but the Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin agrees a lot more needs to be done to cut alcohol abuse and to get children to go to school.

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